WEB MUSIC CLOGS COLLEGE COMPUTERS

J. Linn Allen, Tribune Staff WriterCHICAGO TRIBUNE

An epidemic of students downloading pirated music from the Internet has drastically slowed entire university computer systems in Illinois and elsewhere, forcing administrators to block use of a popular music site on the Web and in some cases to cut off students' access to campus Internet systems.

Despite efforts to quell the practice at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, the problem is so bad that the computer network security official there spends most of his time tracking down copyright violators, handling about 30 cases a week.

The downloading of pirated recordings and videos is a massive and widespread problem for the entertainment industry, hardly confined to college campuses. Yet it is having a particularly acute effect there because of the concentration of young people who have access to universities' large computer networks.

For campus officials, it is not the presumed illegality but the volume of traffic that is creating the worst problems.

High-speed networks at the U. of I., the University of Chicago, Northwestern University and other schools have become so clogged that students and faculty trying to get onto the Internet for academic purposes have found themselves facing long waits.

"It was unquestionably inhibiting" academic activities, said Gregory Jackson, chief information officer for the U. of C., the latest local school to crack down on the music download explosion.

Last week the university imposed a campus ban on the use of a program called Napster, which provides an easy way for users to download music as highly compressed, space-saving MP3 files, a format that allows the transmission of high-quality sound over the Internet.

The program can be downloaded from a Web site run by Napster Inc., an Internet start-up in California's Silicon Valley, which is being sued by the Recording Industry Association of America for allegedly facilitating widespread music piracy.

Jackson said his office, which oversees all campus networks and computers, began noticing an increase in Internet traffic early last fall. Use kept climbing, and a monitoring system identified Napster as the cause of the traffic, he said.

People trying to connect to the Internet for other purposes experienced "very slow responses," Jackson said.

Jackson noted that the most pernicious aspect of the program is that it allows entry to the user's computer by computer users all over the world, transforming it into what is called a server.

"In effect it was using our network as a distribution network to other places. The outbound traffic was causing huge problems," Jackson said.

The university blocked outside users of Napster and e-mailed students telling them to remove Napster and all similar software from their files or face disciplinary action. Internet traffic on the affected pipeline has been down 10 percent since then, Jackson said.

The move followed similar actions by the U. of I. and NU. Other schools that have imposed Napster bans are Boston University, the University of Texas and Oregon State University, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

In a statement, Napster spokeswoman Elizabeth Brooks stated: "The support of Napster by college students nationwide has been incredible and we welcome that, but we are also keenly aware of the band-width issues faced by some universities and we are working together to address that."

The issue of copyrights often is not the main concern of university officials.

"It was not really a legal concern, strictly network allocation," said Alan Cubbage, NU's vice president of university relations. "It was hampering other users using it for library access, data and research."

At the other end of the spectrum is Bob Foertsch, security officer for the campus computing operation at the U. of I., who says he regularly lectures students on copyright laws when they are caught downloading large amounts of music.

The problem is: "The taxpayers of the state are paying . . . to satisfy the demands for illegal materials," he said. "We're trying to be responsible to the record industry and the movie industry and federal law."

The university put a ban on Napster in November, after officials noted that traffic it was generating was taking up to 50 percent of space on the campus Internet system. Violators can have their computer connections cut off temporarily.

Yet the fact that Foertsch still handles about 30 music and video downloading cases a week from the 7,500 computers in the school's residence halls shows that the practice has not stopped. There are other programs that students can use that do not clog up the school networks as much, experts say.

The existence of such alternatives--and methods for using Napster so it is not as noticeable--might be why student reactions to the bans have been relatively muted.

"In general people aren't too angry," said Stephen Witt, news editor of the U. of C.'s student newspaper, the Chicago Maroon.

The most outrage came from "hard-core libertarian computer nerds" arguing that concept of copyright is outdated in the computer age, he said.

Other students are likely finding ways to download music illegally without infringing on network space, he said.

"It's a very popular and common phenomenon," Witt said. "Almost everyone who has a computer is somehow involved in the illegal piracy software trade."